Friday, January 16, 2015

KAFKA (1991)

A LITTLE TOO SODERBERGH ... EVEN FOR SODERBERGH

VAULTED TREASURES:
HARD TO FIND FILMS
WORTH SEEKING OUT

Streaming is wonderful, but many cinematic gems (for various reasons)
have yet to make the leap to NetFlix, Hulu, Blu-ray or even DVD. In fact
some have never been released in ANY home video format. And for this
reason we saved our old school VHS tapes / players and DVD burner; and
love to return "to the vaults" to relive old faves.

Some films are
perhaps just too experimental and deliberately vague / "Rorschach"- like
(or maybe ahead of their time) to be understood, ... even by their
makers. After winning the Cannes Film Festival's Palm d'or for his 1989
breakout hit SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE - and at age 26 becoming the
youngest director to do so, Steven Soderbergh went on to be lauded as
(Roger Ebert's words here) the "poster boy of the Sundance generation",
and, along with a handful of others at the time such as Spike Lee and
Wayne Wang, was credited with helping to launch the modern independent
cinema movement. Eagerly courted by studios large and small, filmdom's
fans (and industry execs) eagerly anticipated the wunderkind's next
cinematic endeavor. Then when KAFKA hit theaters on November 15th, 1991
there was a resoundingly loud world-wide collective "Huh?" accompanied
by quite a bit of head scratching.

To say KAFKA was a box office
disappointment is an understatement. With a budget of $11 million (a
hefty price tag for an independent film - in this case funded by the
still fledgling Miramax in conjunction with Barry Levinson's Baltimore
Pictures) it barely broke $1 million in ticket sales. Critics were
split down the middle; and not in the sense that half liked it and half
didn't. But in the rare sense that almost every critic both liked AND
hated it, or at least certain elements. Many questioned why Soderbergh
would choose as his sophomore effort something thematically so far
removed from the intimate Eric Rohmer-esque nature of SEX, LIES. And
while Soderbergh defended his position, saying he'd ALWAYS been drawn to
this kind of film making, and that SEX, LIES was actually the departure
for him, he would later publicly state that perhaps KAFKA was indeed a
career "misstep"; and even today he talks of revamping it completely.
Wow! Now, for those who "came in late" and are not familiar with this
intriguing (if yes, somewhat indecipherable - it does beg repeated
viewings) little gem, here's a little primer.

In Prague of 1919,
Kafka (a fictitious amalgam of Kafka characters "Joseph K", "Gregor
Samsa" and the writer himself; ... and here portrayed by Jeremy Irons)
works a life-sucking existence as an insurance claims cipher by day, but
let's his imagination loose by night via the spinning of stories the
world will come to recognize as being from the author's famous pen.
When a co-worker mysteriously disappears, Kafka seeks answers and is
plunged into a dark, disturbing (and very funny) web of intrigue
involving a possible police cover up, politics, and a group of bomb
planting anarchists who insists a conspiracy is afoot ... though they
have nothing but their own paranoia on which to base their theory.
Kafka's personal investigation allies him with his missing co-worker's
mistress (Theresa Russell), and leads to his piercing the walls of the
macabre "Castle" overlooking the city, to where it seems many street
innocents have been dragged for human experimentation.

Close
thematic, visual and tonal kin to Terry Gilliam's earlier BRAZIL, David
Cronenberg's later NAKED LUNCH and Alex Proyas' DARK CITY, screenwriter
Lem Dobb's fashioned KAFKA the film as sort of his own version of
Cronenberg's "Brundle-Fly" - wherein the DNA of two very different
beings are merged to create a third. In this case feeling it was
impossible to faithfully adapt a Kafka story to the screen, he took
literary DNA samples (so to speak) from various works by the author,
combined them with references to the author's actual life, then stirred
them together into a new narrative all his own. And we've always loved
it. It's certainly not for all tastes. And as stated earlier one has
to watch it more than once to start peeling away it's layers of
socio-political brilliance - especially it's satirical humor aimed squarely at conformist
mentality. But for those who don't mind putting a little "brain work" into
their cinema viewing, KAFKA is a visually stunning work of art, and a 24 fps thesis paper on bravura filmmaking technique.

Quite possibly it
was marketed incorrectly. It's posters and theatrical trailers billed
it as "A new thriller from the director of SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE". And
when audiences and critics saw it, what they got was something more
like a grand scale "chamber piece" featuring characters verbally fencing
over concepts such as the nature (and function and purpose) of man in a
"civilized" society; and all of it doled out with the fast, furious and funny, back-and-forth, racquetball-like verbal witticisms one might expect to be more at home in an Abbott
& Costello routine or Zucker - Abrams - Zucker film.

Jeremy Irons had one year earlier displayed his (at times dark and dead
pan) comedic chops as wife-murderer suspect Claus von Bülow in REVERSAL
OF FORTUNE, and Joel Grey had already proved he knew his way around an
acerbic verbal put-down as martial arts master Chiun in REMO WILLIAMS.
But who the hell knew Armin Mueller-Stahl, Jeroen Krabbe, Ian Holm and
Alec Guinness could actually, while playing it entirely straight, be so
damned funny. There's even method-in-the-madness (or is it
madness-in-the-method?) in Soderbergh's casting choice of the usually
grim and proper Theresa Russell - perhaps best known to art house cinema
audiences as six time collaborator with director (and former husband)
Nicholas Roeg on films such as BAD TIMING, INSIGNIFICANCE and TRACK 29.

But this is precisely part of KAFKA's genius as a film - it's subversion
of / homage to cinematic convention. In the "classic homage" department the film is stunningly shot in old school
black & white (with one climactic WIZARD OF OZ-like color sequence)
by Walt Lloyd - of TV's THE WONDER YEARS and ARMISTEAD MAUPIN'S TALES OF THE
CITY; and it features gorgeous Oscar worthy period production design by Gavin
Bouquet. In fact it's Bouquet's work here which convinced George Lucas to hire him for his YOUNG
INDIANA JONES chronicles TV series and second trilogy of STAR WARS films. And, while cinematic costume design is usually (and appropriately) executed to have a more background / subconscious effect on audiences, KAFKA's craftsman-like bravura features a magnificently detailed wardrobe by Michael Jeffery (Ken Russell's go-to guy on LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, GOTHIC and SALOME'S LAST DANCE), which not only delivers to the audience a distinct and deliberate "in your face" reference to the days of Huston / Curtiz-esque noir (appropriate as the film's narrative unfolds as a Chandler-esque mystery), but is of such runway world caliber as to make Coppolla's THE GODFATHER films, or Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, green with envy.

On the "subversion" side of the coin, Soderbergh's casting of usually "hard core" / straight faced British cinema stalwarts like
Guiness, and having them play their parts soooo straight as to poke fun
at the corporate and political mindset, is one of this film's sooo many / sooo subtle "below the waterline" pleasures. But that's of course only if you're in on the joke.

If you take KAFKA
dead serious as a "thriller" you're bound to be not only disappointed,
but to (as most of the world did during it's initial release) scratch
one's head while screaming "What the f***!". No, if it wasn't clear
before, let it be made so now - KAFKA is satire, the kind born of
"playing it straight". Y'know, kind of like NETWORK. While visually
reminiscent of BRAZIL (and it would make a fascinating companion piece /
double bill with it) it doesn't make it's post modern intent as obvious
as Gilliam's film does - with it's cast kind of side-winking at the
audience via the characters deliberately playing things over the top.
Uh, uh! KAFKA plays it straight. And as such we feel it was
misinterpreted by audiences as "a suspense thriller that's not
thrilling" when it never had any intent of being one. At any rate ...

While developing a loyal cult following over the years (and we consider
ourselves amongst the loudest members of it's cheerleader squad),
KAFKA's only ever official availability on home video has been a
simultaneous one time only VHS and Laser Disc (remember those? - we
still have ours) release by Paramount in 1992. It has since been made
available as a supposedly Region Free DVD manufactured in Korea, but
with dubious legality. And because it's price on Amazon and other
outlets exceeds $200.00, coupled with the fact that there are some
complaints about the disc NOT playing properly on Region 1 (U.S. and
CANADA) players, leads us to suggest anyone interested in checking out
this nifty piece of film making either do so via YouTube (yes, a decent
copy is available on YouTube FOR FREE!, and it's been there for a few
years), pick up the VHS tape (you can find one for $20 bucks online), or ... just wait. Huh? Yeah, seriously, just wait.

You see, KAFKA's status
as a relatively obscure film which many don't give a damn about,
actually now has a positive side. After years of subsequent critical
and commercial Soderbergh successes such as OCEAN'S 11 and it's sequels,
ERIN BROCKOVICH, OUT OF SIGHT, K STREET, CONTAGION, MAGIC MIKE, THE
KNICK and more, the rights to KAFKA have since reverted back to
Soderbergh, and he wants to re-do it in a major way. Last year in
interviews with both The Vulture and Empire magazines, the director
revealed that, while filming SIDE EFFECTS, he'd shot new inserts for
KAFKA, and that he was working with Lem Dobbs on dubbing the entire film
into German, and "recalibrating some of the dialog and the story" so
it's (as he states) "a completely different movie".

"I was
frustrated with KAFKA", Soderbergh said, "It had a mixed-to-negative
reaction when it came out – and I’m trying to completely rethink it in
the hopes of at least turning it into something that’s unified. The tone
was all over the place – which is the classic young filmmaker’s
mistake. I’d like to make it a little more abstract and more of a
hardcore art movie. It’s not a tweak: it’s triage”. These "triage"
plans also include giving the film a shorter running time than it's
current 100 mins., re-editing it, jettisoning it's current score (not
something we're too keen on as we love Cliff Martinez's current "Gypsy"
influenced hammer dulcimer take on things), and calling it the "Midnight
Edition" as it would be perfect for Friday and Saturday night
screenings - an intentional "cult film" of sorts, ... if there can be
such a thing.

Normally we'd bristle at such a notion, as "extended" /
"altered" / "director's cut" versions of films such as HEAVEN'S GATE,
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, BRAZIL, LEGEND and WATERWORLD now and then
are improvements, but more often than not (as evidenced by the
re-jiggering of say THE NATURAL, CINEMA PARADISO, David Lynch's DUNE and
more) prove that "more is less", Soderbergh claims he'd like to release
both the original and new versions on Blu-ray. And if this is indeed
the case, well then hell, anything that gets the original version of
KAFKA restored, remastered and re-released in High Def, has got our
thumbs-up vote.